The present invention relates to a process for manufacturing a gearwheel.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
Large gearwheels are generally manufactured as individual pieces or in small series. A gearwheel blank is hereby first clamped in a workholder of a special gear cutting machine. In this state tooth spaces are milled out of the gearwheel blank by a milling head, so that by milling out the tooth spaces from the gearwheel blank a gearwheel having teeth is produced. The premachined gearwheel is then removed from the gear cutting machine and placed in a furnace. There the gearwheel is heated as a whole and is hardened—generally with the addition of additives. Then in a further machine tool the teeth of the gearwheel are remachined, for example remilled or reground.
This process is time-consuming, expensive and relatively imprecise. In particular, transporting the gearwheel between the milling-out of the tooth spaces and the remachining of the teeth of the gearwheel can cause inaccuracies in the adjustment of the gearwheel.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to address prior art shortcomings and to render application of an inductive hardening process possible, without requiring any additional current supply device especially for an inductor.